Thanks to reporting from Green Car Reports and an e-mail reply from the California Fuel Cell Partnership I have an official statement from Air Products.
It’s been more than two weeks since Southern California Fuel Cell Vehicle owners first started noticing their stations not being refilled and now we finally have an official statement from Air Products on what went wrong. According to Green Car Reports and the CaFCP, ” a contemporaneous series of unrelated issues at several liquid hydrogen production and supply sites” resulted in what they’re calling an “unexpected disruption.” I’ve included a screenshot of their full statement below.
Admittedly, their statement was pretty vague and included no specifics, which is expected from a supplier of Hydrogen gas and compressed liquids whose process is frankly not common knowledge at the moment. In addition, no specific date given for a return to service is a tad concerning although, as reported earlier, Air Products did inform CaFCP that one week of shortages are expected.
But, thanks to an FCV owner I prefer to keep anonymous, at one point, both Hydrogen production plants owned by Air Products was not operational.
…one of the local plants that manufacture the liquid H2 went down and before that plant was back up a second plant went down due to an electrical problem and the closest plant they could get supply was in Louisiana. They stated that the issues should be rectified soon and things should be back to normal.
According to a current internal document from Air Products, they have two production Hydrogen production facilities in Carson and Wilmington, Calif.
At the moment, six stations supplied by Air Products in the Southern California area are without H2 although stations in Costa Mesa, Lake Forest, Hollywood, Newport Beach and West L.A. are reading operational albeit not full. I’ll be monitoring station levels throughout the weekend as FCV owners will surely take this time to run some errands and refill.
I’m disappointed that I had to source Air Products’ official statement from a third-party and wasn’t replied to directly from my own inquiry nor could I find an update on their website or social media feeds.
How frustrating it is for people who actually own FCV’s, left in the dark like this.
Hopefully, I can report on some good news coming from Air Products in the coming days along with their solutions so this shortage doesn’t happen in the future.
[…] I reported earlier yesterday that Air Products, a Hydrogen fuel supplier for True Zero and Air Products stations accounting for 17 of the 24 stations in SoCal, suffered a supply line disruption. And to be fair, while Toyota and Honda aren’t directly responsible for this Hydrogen fuel shortage, it’s within their power to help out their respective owners at their discretion. […]